- H.A. is descended from Mary Jane Artis Artis, daughter of Adam and Lucinda Jones Artis.
- H.B. is descended from Henry J.B. Artis, son of Adam and Amanda Aldridge Artis. (We have two lines of connection — Artis and Aldridge.)
- M.S. is descended from Theophilus Simonton, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. She is, by far, the most remote match I have, and I’m astounded that that little stretch of DNA has persisted across 300+ years.
- E.H. and I share two lines of descent, from James Henderson and from John and Louvicey Artis Aldridge. On the Henderson side, we are 3rd cousins, twice removed (or a little less, as we descend from different wives of James Henderson.) On the Aldridge side, 2nd cousins, once removed. 23andme estimated our relationship as 2nd to 3rd cousins.
- G.P. and I are descended from two daughters of Urban Lewis and his wife Susan Casey Lewis — Susan Marinda Lewis Potts and Eliza Lewis Martin. Ancestry DNA estimates us as 4th cousins; we are actually 3rd, thrice removed. I also have an Ancestry match with “ead43,” who is descended from Susan Casey Lewis’ brother, William Casey. Estimated at 5th-8th cousins, we are 5th, twice removed. I also match D.P., a close cousin of G.P., but on a different chromosome. FTDNA identifies yet another cousin, K.S., who matches G.P. and I on the same stretch of DNA on chromosome 9. She is a descendant of a Lewis from Wake County NC, but does not know how he links to Urban Lewis, who was the son of William T. Lewis and Sarah Utley Lewis of Dobbs (later Wayne) County.
Monthly Archives: September 2013
Napoleon Hagans’ house.
Around the time he testified before the US Senate, Napoleon Hagans had this house built below the south bank of Aycock Swamp, near Fremont in northern Wayne County. It remains occupied and is featured in J. Daniel Pezzoni and Penne Smith’s Glimpses of Wayne County, North Carolina: An Architectural History (1998):
“The house, a single-pile center-hall-plan dwelling, has retained much of its charming original hip-roofed front porch, now supported by replacement square columns. Windows are surmounted by moulded peaked arch surrounds. … One original single-shouldered exterior end chimney was plastered; the other was replaced by a concrete-block flue. …”
A stone monument marking the graves of Napoleon and his wife Apsilla Ward Hagans stands in a cornfield about one hundred yards west of the house.
Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2010.
She would always bring him something.
My grandmother: My grandmother used to always bring him something down, she’d come down sometimes Sunday afternoon or Saturday night.
My aunt: Grandma Allen?
My grandmother: No, no, no, no, no. My daddy.
Me: Harriet.
My grandmother: She would always bring him something. In the springtime, when there’d be strawberries and rhubarb, she used to make strawberry pie with rhubarb in ’em. And she would make three or four and stack ’em like that. And cut all the way down. And she would always bring that to Papa.
Margaret C. Allen on this family’s stack pie legacy.
——
Interview of Margaret C. Allen by Lisa Y. Henderson; all rights reserved.
Happy birthday, Daddy.
My father, the batboy. Fleming Stadium, Wilson NC, late 1940s.
Photo in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.
Aunt Jane and the alligator.
While perusing the November 2001 issue of Trees, the publication of the Wilson County Genealogical Society, I ran across a previously unnoticed article about Jane Sauls and her daughters and their encounter with an alligator on their farm near Stantonsburg. (“Unnoticed” in that I’d read it years ago, but not appreciated what I was reading.) Jane was a first cousin to my great-great-great-grandfather, Adam T. Artis (1831-1919).
Jane Lane Sauls was born circa 1842 in Greene County NC. She died on 16 Dec 1928 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, North Carolina. She was one of several children of Sylvania Artis, a free woman of color, and her husband Guy Lane, an enslaved man, but is not found in the 1850 or 1860 censuses.
In the 1870 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, farm laborer John Sauls, 35, wife Jane, 27, and children Mary, 3, and Silvany, 1, are listed with Trecinda Barnes, 20, Jane Barnes, 7, and Edwin Barnes, 1. No marriage record for Jane and John has been located, and their relationship to the Barneses is unknown.
The 1880 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows farmer John Sauls, 45, wife Jane, 36, daughters Mary, 12, Silvany, 9, Anner, 7, and Lucy, 6, plus Jane’s sister Fanny Lane, 14. (Sister? Really? I’d bet niece.)
On 30 Nov 1894, J.W. Coley applied for a marriage license for Morrison Artis of Wayne County, 50, colored, son of Guy Coley and Sylvania Coley, both dead, and Jane Farrior of Wayne County, 35, colored, of unnamed parents, both dead. (This is the only instance of Coley as a surname for Guy.) The ceremony was performed by D.F. Ormond, Justice of the Peace, on 6 Dec 1894 at John Sauls’ house.in Nahunta township, before B.W. Best, John Sauls, and J. Reid. Morrison Artis was Jane Lane Sauls’ brother. Some of the siblings adopted their mother’s surname, Artis; others used their father’s, Lane.
The 1900 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, wife Jane, daughters Mary and Sylvania Sauls, and “grandchildren” Louvenia (Apr 1883), Henry (Oct 1885) and John Lane (Oct 1886). In fact, these children were probably the children of Jane’s brother Alford Lane.
The 1910 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, 76, wife Jane, 56, Mary, 38, Sylvany, 36, Anna, 33, and Snobe, 10, plus niece Louvenia Lane, 23, and boarder Freeman Swinson,14. Anna reported that she was divorced; Snobe was her son. John B. Sauls, alias Snow B. Nobles, died in 1925. His father was Columbus Nobles. Freeman Swinson was the son of Jane’s sister Mariah Artis Swinson.
The 1920 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County NC shows Anna Sauls, 45, widowed, sharing a household with her sisters Sylvania, 46, and Mary, 49, widowed mother Jane, 76, and cousin Levenia Sauls, 28.
Jane Lane Sauls died 16 Dec 1928 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of paralysis due to hypertension and cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reported that she was born in 1842 in Greene County NC to Guy Lane and Sylvania Artis, both of Greene County, and she was the widow of John Sauls. She was buried 17 Dec 1928, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County, by C.E. Artis, Wilson NC. (C.E., son of Adam Artis, was her cousin.) The informant was Anna Sauls, Rt. 6 Box 94, Stantonsburg.
Anna Sauls died 20 Dec 1950 in Stantonsburg township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was a widow and was born 1 Jan 1878 in Wayne County to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 23 Dec 1950, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County NC. The informant was Louvenia Sauls, R#2 Box 300, Stantonsburg NC.
Sylvania Sauls died 23 Oct 1957 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was about 87 years old and was born in Wayne County NC to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 28 Oct 1957 in Union Grove cemetery. The informant was Louvenia Sauls.
Mary Sauls died 29 Dec 1960 in Fremont township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. [Did all these women really die of strokes, or was that a default diagnosis?] Her death certificate reports that she was born 3 Sep 1861 in Wayne County to Johnnie Sauls and Jane Lane. Mary was buried 3 Jan 1961, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County. The informant was Anna Ray, Rt. 2 Box 143, Fremont NC.
Lucinda Cowles, also known as Lucinda Nicholson.
I give and bequeath to my beloved son Thomas A. the following Negroes to wit Carlos Nelson Lucinda and Joe.
——
On 19 Nov 1850, James Nicholson wrote out his last will and testament. Two days later, before he could sign it, he slipped into death. The document was registered 19 Jun 1852 in Will Book 4, page 666 at the Iredell County Register of Deeds Office. Nicholson’s only heirs were his widow Mary Allison Nicholson and sons Thomas A. and John M. Nicholson. James left Thomas 185 acres and John 242 acres and gave them a 75-acre mill tract in common. Mary Nicholson received slaves Milas, Dinah, Jack, Liza and Peter; John received slaves Elix, Paris and Daniel; and Thomas received the four named above. In addition, James bequeathed Thomas and John slaves Manoe, Armstrong, Manless, Calvin and Soffie jointly.
Thomas A. Nicholson put Lucinda to work in his home preparing meals and otherwise caring for his family. As Thomas’ son James Lee Nicholson grew to adulthood, he took increasing notice of the woman who cooked his suppers, laundered his shirts and emptied his slops. In 1861, she gave birth to his first child, a daughter that she named Harriet Nicholson. Lucinda and Harriet remained in Thomas Nicholson’s household till Emancipation, when they were provided with a small house and other support.
As the story goes, Harriet did not learn her father’s identity until her mother Lucinda revealed it on her deathbed. Lee Nicholson passed away when Harriet was 10 years old, leaving a widow and two small boys. Lucinda may have died even earlier, as she has not been found in the 1870 census. She had one other child, a son named William H. Nicholson, whose father was Burwell Carson. Based on information supplied by Harriet, William’s death certificate lists Lucinda’s maiden name as Cowles. We know nothing else about her life.
John H. & Sarah Simmons Henderson.
John Henry Henderson, son of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson, married Sarah Elizabeth Simmons, daughter of Bryant and Elizabeth Wynn Simmons, in about 1886. The couple remained in the Dudley area their entire lives and reared three children — Frances, Charles Henry and Henry Lee — to adulthood. John died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1924.
I worked for it.
TESTIMONY OF NAPOLEON HIGGINS.
NAPOLEON HIGGINS, colored, sworn and examined.
By Senator VANCE:
Question. Where do you reside? Answer. Near Goldsborough. I don’t stay in Goldsborough, but it is my county seat. I live fifteen miles from town.
Q. What is your occupation? A. I am farming.
Q. Do you farm your own land? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much do you own? A. Four hundred and eighty-five acres.
Q. How did you get it? A. I worked for it.
Q. Were you formerly a slave? A. No, sir; I was a free man before the war.
Q. You say you worked for it? A. Yes, sir; I worked for it, and got it since the war.
Q. What is it worth per acre? A. I don’t know, sir, what it is worth now. I know what I paid for it.
Q. What did you pay for it? A. I believe I paid $5,500, and then I have got a little town lot there that I don’t count, but I think it is worth about $500.
Q. Then you have made all that since the war? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much cotton do you raise? A. I don’t raise as much as I ought to. I only raised fifty-eight bales last year.
Q. What is that worth? A. I think I got $55 a bale.
Q. How many hands do you work yourself? A. I generally rent my land. I only worked four last year, and paid the best hand, who fed the mules and tended around the house, ten dollars; and the others I paid ten, and eight and seven.
Q. That was last year? A. Yes, sir.
Q. What did you give them besides their pay? A. I gave them rations; and to a man with a family I gave a garden patch and a house, and a place to raise potatoes.
Q. What about the rate of wages in your section of the country; does that represent them? A. Yes, sir; of course a no account hand don’t get much, and a smart one gets good wages.
Q. Have you made any contracts for this year? A. Yes, sir; but I am only hiring two hands this year.
Q. What do your tenants pay you for the use of your land? A. Some of the tenants give me a third of the corn and a third of the cotton. Then I have got some more land that I rent out to white men, and they give me a fourth of the cotton, and another gives me a thousand pounds of lint cotton for twenty acres.
Q. Does anybody interfere with your right to vote down there? A. No, sir.
Q. Or with any of the rights of your race? A. No, sir; we vote freely down there. Of course, if one man can persuade you to vote with him, that is all right. But you can vote as you please.
Q. What are your politics? A. I am a republican, and that is the way my township generally votes.
Q. You say there is no interference with the rights of your race there? A. Not that I know of.
Q. There has been something said here about the landlord and tenant act. Do you think that does anybody any harm? A. I think it is a good law.
Q. The object of it is to give you a lien on everything your tenant has until your rent is paid? A. Yes, sir; and I think I am entitled to that.
Q. These white tenants can’t run off any of your cotton until you are paid? A. No, sir; I am five or six miles from them, and they can’t run it off. They might do it and I not see them if I did not have the law to back me; and they are just as apt to run it off as not when they start.
Q. Then you think it is a good protection to you in your rights? A. Yes, sir; I do.
Q. Do you have any schools down there? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How is the money raised for them? Most of it is by a property tax, is it not? A. Yes, sir.
Q. And the poll tax all goes to education except twenty-five cents on the dollar? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know how much land your race has acquired in that county? A. I reckon they have got fifteen hundred acres in our township; but I could not tell how much in the county.
Q. Is there any distinction made between the whites and the blacks down there in the renting of lands? A. None that I know of.
Q. Both are paid the same wages? A. Yes, sir; unless a man wants to hire some man to lock his doors and look after and keep his keys; then they pay him more. And if it is a colored man that he has confidence in, they pay him the same.
Q. Is there any distinction there to take all white men as tenants? A. No, sir; in our township they take them without regard to color. If a man is a smart man, he gets in just the same as a white man. Colored men rent from white men, and white men from colored men.
Q. Did you ever have any talk with any of those people who went to Indiana? A. No, sir; I never saw one who went.
Q. Did you ever hear any of the speeches of any of these men who were stirring up these men? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you see any of their circulars? A. No, sir.
Q. Nor hear of any inducements offered to them? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you get any letters from any of them who went out there? A. No, sir; I wasn’t acquainted with any who went. I learned more of it at Goldsborough last Monday night, when I was coming on here, than I ever knew before.
Q. Are there any complaints among your people to discriminations in the courts, between the whites and blacks? A. Yes, sir; I have heard them say that the same evidence that will convict a colored man for stealing won’t convict a white man.
Q. When they are convicted, are they punished alike? Yes, sir; in the same cases. I have spoke to them and told them, lots of times, that of course they would be convicted many times where a white man would get out, and the only way to avoid that was to quit stealing. I told them, a white man has got more sense and more money to pay lawyers and knows better how to hid his rascality, and the best way for the colored man to keep out of the penitentiary was to quit stealing.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. Is it the general impression among colored people down there that they don’t get justice? A. Yes, sir; when two or three colored men get convicted they think so. But there are more black men convicted because there are more of them tried.
Q. You say they have not got sense enough to get out of it when they get in; they have attorneys, do they not? A. Yes, sir; but very often they have not got the money to feed up an attorney; and, you know, they more you pay a lawyer the more he sticks with you.
Q. Is there not discrimination there in the employment of mechanics? A. No, sir; I never heard of it.
By Senator VOORHEES:
Q. Do you know of any of these people, white and black, who have been convicted that you thought were convicted wrongfully? A. No, sir.
Q. You thought they were rightfully convicted? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You have been on juries yourself; did you ever make any difference between them? A. No, sir; I have sat on juries there many times, and sat on a case of a white man who was tried for his life.
Q. Was there any other colored man on that jury? A. No, sir; I was the only one on that one; but I have been on others.
Q. You have sat on juries when white men’s cases were being tried, both on the criminal and on the civil sides of the court? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did any white man object to you sitting on them? A. No, sir.
Q.Then most of this talk about discrimination and injustice is by men who have been disappointed in the results of their suits? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You see no cause for it yourself? A. No, sir.
Q. You have heard white men complain just as bitterly? A. Yes, sir; of course. I suppose they are like I am. I always try to beat the case.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. You say you think this land and tenant act a good thing; do you think the renter is in favor of it? A. I don’t know; they never say anything to me about it. I am on the other side of that question.
Q. Does not the fact that you own 285 [sic] acres of land give you a little better standing in the community than most of your colored friends? A. Of course; I suppose it does.
Q. How did you start it? A. I rented a farm and started on two government horses. I went to the tightest man I know and got him to help me. I rented from Mr. Exum out there.
Q. Are there others who have succeeded as well as you? A. Yes, sir; there are. One or two men who have succeeded better than me. There are several of them in good circumstances there in our township. I think, altogether, they own 1,500 acres there.
Q. How many colored people own this? A. I reckon 150.
Q. The 1,500 acres is divided up among 150 people? A. No, sir; a good many of them have got none.
Q. This is what I asked you: How many own this 1,500 acres, all put together? A. I reckon a dozen. It might not be more than eight. It is from eight to a dozen, anyhow. But there are a number who own some little lots of land of four or five acres that I have not mentioned.
This, of course, was Napoleon Hagans (not Higgins)’ testimony before a Senate Select Committee investigating the migration of hundreds of African-Americans from the South to Kansas Indiana in the late 1870s, allegedly because of “denial or abridgment of their personal and political rights and privileges.” Hagans’ testimony about the source of his relative wealth, as well his opinions about the political and judicial climate for colored men in his part of North Carolina, were well-received by the committee, which concluded that all was well in Dixie. Nonetheless, it is perhaps possible — if one suppresses natural feeling and attempts to stand in Napoleon’s shoes — to detect a very subtle undercurrent of resistance here and there in the essential conservatism of his words.
Transcript in Senate Report 693, 2nd Session, 46th Congress: Proceedings of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States, Washington DC, beginning Tuesday, 9 March 1880.
Robert Aldridge.
Again from “The Adam Artis Family History“:
Robert Aldridge was born in 1819, in or near Savannah, Georgia. He owned about 700 acres of land in Dudley. He ran a brick kiln, where he employed a lot of extra hands to make bricks. He was taken ill in the woods opossum hunting and never recovered. He died in 1871 at the age of 52. He had 7 or 8 brothers and sisters.
Sentence by sentence:
(1) I suppose that it is remotely possible that Robert Aldridge was born in or near Savannah, but it seems highly unlikely. More probably, as reported in the 1850 census, he was born in Duplin County NC and was the free colored son of a white woman. An extended family of white Aldridges lived in the Duplin/Greene/Lenoir County area and at least one, Winnie Aldridge, had children of color during the right timeframe.
(2) At his death, Robert owned just under 600 acres of land near Dudley, as his estate division attests.
(3) His brick kiln was located on present-day Durham Lake Road, near the lake, which is a dammed stretch of Yellow Marsh Branch.
(4) Interesting.
(5) Actually, he died about 1899.
(6) If he did, who were they??? I am reasonably sure that John Matthew Aldridge was a brother, but that’s it.
The belle of her set.
IN THE “MOVIES.”
Colored Girl is Said to be Playing Part in Large Moving Picture Company.
Kittie Reeves, a mulatto girl who possesses more than the usual amount of good looks, lived in this city several years ago, but now is said to be a leading woman in a well-known motion picture company. Kitty Reeves lived here from her early childhood. Her name was Kitty Smith before she married Charles Reeves, a highly respected negro, a son of Fletcher Reeves, the veteran hearse driver of the old Wadsworth Livery Stables for numbers of years. Kitty was always said to have been the belle of her set. She was a bright and accomplished young negress, but the lure of the stage was always within her, and when Black Patti came through here in 1910, Kitty Reeves applied for a place in the chorus. Immediately upon signing the contract, her name became Katherine Reeves. The tour was a success, but during the between-season lay-off, Katherine secured a place in a well-known manicuring establishment in Philadelphia.
The girl was possessed of fair skin with coloring. Her hair was long, but black with many freckles on her face. After learning the secrets of the manicurists’ art, Katherine underwent treatment for some time. When she ceased working on her face and hair, a great transformation had taken place. No longer was the hair black, but it had been turned to a dull auburn. The freckles had departed from her face, and she bore all of the appearances of a white person.
After leaving Philadelphia, Katherine became connected with a well-known motion picture firm in the State of New York. Many of her colored friends in the city claim to have recognized her a number of times playing leading parts in the film plays. So far as is known, this is the only person from Charlotte who has ever appeared upon the screens as an actress for motion pictures.
Charlotte Observer, 29 December 1912.
Ten years before this article appeared, twenty-one year-old Frank Reeves applied for a marriage license for himself and Kate Smith, 18. Both lived in Mecklenburg County. Frank (called Charles, above) was the son of Fletcher and Angeline McConnaughey Reeves. Kate’s parents were listed as Thomas and Mary Smith. S.H. Hilton, justice of the peace, married the young couple on 1 Aug 1902 at the county courthouse.
The marriage did not prosper. When the censustaker reached their neighborhood in 1910, he found Frank and Kate’s only child, 7 year-old Wilbur, living with his paternal grandparents. Charles (or Frank) and Kate (or Kittie or Katherine) do not appear together in that census or any other. (She had gone off with Black Patti by that time and, presumably, was pursuing her career as a star of the silent screen.)
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 